Facebook adds real time updates to news feed

[Jazzy]

Facebook makes its third major announcement in ten days with a news feed that learns when you last logged in, adds bigger pictures and sits next to real-time updates.



Facebooks news feed, seen regularly by more than 750 million members, is to be revamped to take into account when users last logged in. The move will mean that frequent users will automatically be presented with the most recent news, while less frequent visitors will be presented with a separate section of highlights since their most recent visit.



The changes, which come in what founder Mark Zuckerberg has called the social network’s ‘launch season’, are designed to amalgamate the existing “Top news” and “Most Recent” options so that users do not need to switch between the two. It should also prevent news appearing in both feeds.



Facebook is also set to incorporate larger photos in the news feed and to give the top right-hand corner of the screen over to a new feature called “Ticker”. This will present the latest things a user’s friends are doing on the site live, in real time, and can be resized to take up more or less of the screen if required.



The news feed will now be presented with two tiers, “Top stories” and “Recent stories”, if users have not visited the site for a length of time. Frequent visitors will just see “Recent stories”. Stories can be manually adjusted so they do not appear in the “Top” section.



Last week Facebook announced subscription options and lists so users could see specific friends’ updates and share information solely with certain groups of people. The introduction of the “Ticker” will increase the amount of real-time content on a user’s main screen, but a Facebook spokesman said it was not designed to make people “lose their place” in their news feed.



Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...book-adds-real-time-updates-to-news-feed.html



Question for those of you who use Facebook: Do you like or dislike this new addition and why?

 

[Flurry]

I really don't care for it myself. I liked how it was before. And I know a lot of people on my friends list has complained about it as well.

 

[Loucifer]

I'm really not convinced by the new changes. I was happy with how the site was running before and I can't see how these new things improve the user experience. I very much get the vibe that Facebook are showing off - it's like Hey, everyone! Look what we can do! Aren't we clever?. Yes, you're very clever, but that real-time update box does my head in.



It's also interesting that the changes have been implemented just as Google+ has been made available to everyone. It's almost as if Facebook have panicked and just put the online without fully testing it and seeing if it's actually wanted/needed by their users.



Earlier this week, I was tempted to delete my Facebook account, but I think that over the coming weeks they will iron out most of the kinks. I'm still not keen on most of the new features, but I'm going to take a 'wait and see' approach to it. Whatever the outcome, it will be interesting.